today I’d like to talk to you about what
I do and what sucks about it to give you
a little bit of context this is a kind
of work that I create I do a little bit
of everything from talking to clients
pre-production shoot post-production
editing marketing just about every
single step on the way and it takes me
about six months per project and the
reason I spent so much time to create
these projects is because there are 3.3
million Facebook posts created every 60
seconds there is a lot of content being
created and in order to stand out I have
found that you need to do something
really extraordinary now beyond the
views the real reason why I want to get
these views is because of the reason I
do the work that I do lately I’ve been
focusing on creating work that focuses
on social impact and in this case I’m
trying to highlight electronic waste and
the potential that it has and I’ve found
that it is the best way to educate
through adventure there are tons of
documentaries out there but for someone
to want to look at it is a whole
different question so I trick people by
creating something really flashy so they
look at it and they wonder how it’s done
and along the way then I have the
opportunity to educate them on well did
you know that old electronics could be
recycled to power new devices and that
old circuit boards sometimes have up to
400 times more gold than when it’s found
on the ground right so these little
facts I can sneak in the other reason
that I do what I do is the hope to
inspire others to believe in their
potential to create whatever it is their
heart desires because I’m always
challenging myself to do things I’ve
never done before in this case I’d never
played with electronic waste
I had never created structures and
installations like this before but
through this process of just trying and
problem solving and people coming
together I’m able to create this really
spectacular stuff
but the stuff has a problem right the
problem is that the work that I end up
creating is actually quite unrelatable
and the reason is because when people
look at this they don’t see themselves
in the work that I do after all not
everyone has access to sponsors like
Dell who are gonna provide me with
access to an electronic waste recycling
facility on a Sunday in order to create
something and so what is the solution
well one solution could be to change my
style but I have spent so long trying to
build up this unique style to
communicate important ideas in whatever
way possible and so that’s not really an
option so I have spent a lot of time
trying to figure out how to make my work
more relatable with people and one of
the ways that I do that is by creating
videos like these how do you get people
to talk about something that is ordinary
ugly and boring I wasn’t too sure but
from experience I know that the internet
loves to see things that are extravagant
unique and different so applying that
same concept to plastic bottles having
10,000 of them seemed like a great start
at making something ordinary into
with more plastic than fish in the sea
scheduled for 2015 it made sense to add
an ocean component to the project a sea
of plastic was interesting and sad but
it needed something unique and beautiful
to truly stand out what more unique and
and so with the help of a waste
management center called Tamra and a
local artist in Sofia we ended up with
10,000 plastic bottles that came in a 50
foot truck along with the beautifully
design handmade mermaid tail this
unexpected combination I felt had the
potential to be something truly
different
[Music]
so with all three components to make
things shareable the extravagant the
unique and the different I felt like we
had all of the ingredients necessary to
create something that could potentially
make the boring topic of plastic
pollution more shareable as a shoot
deadlines creep Lord dozens of
volunteers joined us in our quest
contributing whatever they could from
helping us clean and D label thousands
of bottles to ring up my camera to the
ceiling with plywood and pulleys to
borrowing a 52 inch TV from Costco for
the mermaid talented artists came
together to transform our beautiful
model into a believable mermaid and
before I knew it all the pressure was on
me waiting to see if the concerts would
[Music]
as a day flew by volunteers worked
tirelessly pushing bottles around
collecting them organizing them by color
before tossing them right back out onto
the floor to create a new set of
patterns that some crazy photographer
had told them to do
slowly but surely an extravagant unique
and different series appeared just like
Ed hoped but deep in the back of my mind
one nagging thought remained how much
difference could a series like this
possibly make and encouraging people to
stop using plastic bottles honestly I’m
not sure but I guess I’m about to find
out
[Applause]
[Music]
so with the help of a simple video the
same photograph that you just saw two
minutes ago has now become a lot more
relatable and why is that is because we
talked a little bit more about the
process the process of how a bunch of
people just came together in order to
create something that didn’t exist
before a bunch of people came together
to fight for something that they
believed in and these are only the
elements that looked the prettiest I in
the video I didn’t talk about how I
happened to be in Montreal because my
sister was getting married and how my
mom was the one that actually found the
mermaid tail when she was looking for
someone to fix my sister’s wedding dress
or or how the reason we had a warehouse
to play in was because I had shot the
guy’s wedding five years back before he
owned anything right so these that at
the end of the day it’s all these
different story elements that we can
bring together in order to make
something that is seemingly really
complex and unattainable into something
a little bit more accessible but it’s
not just about process process alone
isn’t enough so I want to take this
photograph as an example it’s a type of
work that I used to create before my
social impact days this was a commercial
created for company called Valentine’s
and they wanted me to do the craziest
thing that I had never done before and I
said okay I found this underwater River
online it’s in Mexico it’s 30 meters
underwater there’s a toxic layer of
hydrogen sulfide that squashed between
some fresh water and some saltwater and
it looks like an underwater River and I
thought it would be really cool to put a
boat on an underwater River it’s kind of
funny and so they said okay let’s do it
they custom-made this bird it’s a
taxidermied bird that was flown in from
some country we built a boat a
super-heavy boat that had to be lugged
from through the forest and dropped into
the cenote we gathered all these divers
that flew in hundreds of thousands of
dollars of equipment and dropped it down
30 meters under in order to create this
photograph and so I’ve just shared with
you the process on how this project came
to be but really none of it is relatable
right now let me tell you another story
about a very similar photograph this
photo was taken 30 meters underwater
just like the other one but this time in
a shipwreck in Bali now it happened when
I was supposed to be on vacation
my parents were trying to convince me to
go on a vacation I really didn’t want to
like hate vacations and they said well
you can learn diving and I was like okay
maybe that would work and as I looked
around trying to figure out what to do
once I got my dive certification I saw
shipwreck and I and I was like if
there’s a shipwreck then I need to do a
photo shoot if I need a photo shoot I
need a motto if I need a model I need a
dress and there was no more vacation but
what was really interesting was that I
when I landed there on the Saturday and
I met up with a dive master who was
introduced by a friend that I had met on
Facebook and I told him my wild idea to
do this photo shoot he kind of looked at
me a little crazy because I didn’t have
a dive certification yet but lo and
behold after two days of dive training
and a bunch of e-mails back and forth
with different people on Wednesday I got
my dive certification on Thursday we
went down and did this project and this
was what came out of it now this process
though is a lot more interesting and why
because it’s a lot more accessible it’s
got this situational accessibility this
idea of a vacation gone a little bit
crazy but not too crazy so that it can’t
be that you can’t connect with it and be
on situational access there’s also
emotional accessibility who here is
scared of sharks you know when you’re
scared of sharks like sharks have a
really bad rep we kill like a hundred
million of them every year and I think
they kill maybe three or four people a
year which might sound horrible but more
people die from selfie-stick related
deaths and sharks yet no one’s scared of
them and and so I like to use this
emotional connection that people have to
things whether it’s fear or excitement
depending on which side of the spectrum
you fall and leverage that as a tool to
to connect with people because while you
might not relate to being tied
underwater 12 meters under this idea of
a shark swimming around might terrify
you and then through that once again I
can trick people into explaining the
situation on how we shouldn’t actually
fear sharks and that out of the 300
species of 300 plus species of sharks
that exists out there only a few are
another example of emotional access is
maybe the fear of heights
anyone here scared of heights I
personally love Heights I like if I if I
have the opportunity to I always go to
the highest place I possibly can and
look over but for most others they have
this kind of lurch in this feeling and
this is something that is universal
doesn’t matter what culture you’re from
doesn’t matter from what place you’re
from and so when Nike reached out to me
and said they wanted to promote their
shoes I said oh what if we had people
running off the side of the buildings
they offered me instagramers and I
pushed back I said what about using
social entrepreneurs and so we found
these social entrepreneurs this is Mike
he’s he’s running off the side of the
building which is actually a building a
low-income housing building that he
brought a basketball court to in order
to bring sports to underprivileged
children’s lives and we created this
story as a result and while the whole
setup of this might be a little bit
crazy and unrelatable this fear of
heights this idea of an ordinary person
challenging himself to do something he’s
never done before is something that we
can all relate to I have this series of
photographs that I created for a company
they’re called SmugMug and and they
wanted epic black and white portraits of
their employees showing off their guns
because they had just renovated a new
gym and wanted to print them out to
motivate their employees I thought it
would be really cool to make that as
epic as possible so we created PVC pipes
and garden sprinklers and pass water
through them and created a little rain
machine so for 50 dollars we had this
really cool trick to make everyday
people look really really cool so that’s
actually the CEO that’s his wife in the
middle and there’s a head of marketing
on the other side and so when I launched
this project to a photography audience
we called it the $50 trick to epic
portraiture and it performed pretty well
because photographers were really
excited about this new trick that they
could apply to their everyday workflow
the rest of the world didn’t care
because they’re not gonna do that with
their their cell phones right and so
when I really tried to connect with the
rest of the world because the rest of
the worlds are the people that hire
photographers we decided to relaunch the
entire campaign this time on the 1st of
January
why the 1st of January because that’s
when everyone makes their New Year
resolutions they make their new year’s
resolutions perhaps to go to the gym and
so we relaunch the campaign and focus
not on the end result but rather the
transformation of ordinary people
transformed into extra Nouri
extraordinary athletes and at the end of
the day it created a brand new
connection with people this time around
the idea that you could look
extraordinary if you just hired a great
photographer yeah no need to go to the
gym and so these are just three examples
of how you make things a little bit more
accessible through situations through
emotions and through the different human
characteristics of what makes us who we
are and what we care about now artists
have a really hard time on social media
I think it this this digital age has
really transformed things because
everyone is trying to look as great as
possible everyone wants to be perfect
everyone’s trying to put their best foot
forward and I don’t think it’s maybe
maybe not just artist but just everyday
people anyone who’s on social media
struggles a little bit with this and the
funny thing about it is that although we
try so hard to be perfect what we can
end up doing I feel many of the times
has just hurt our ability to connect
with other is it actually often weakens
it weakens us so this project is another
example that I did a while back and the
idea was to showcase employees their
customer support heroes showing off –
what great heights they would go for
their customers and so we thought it
would be a fun idea to dress them up as
superheroes and put them on the edge of
a 40 storey skyscraper but at the end of
the day after we did the project after I
edited the whole thing trying to make it
look as polished as possible the the
nicest result that I could and I showed
it to people and people were like is it
real until all this effort that went
into creating something and my desire to
make it look as good as possible ended
up making the final result less
relatable then the fun photos we took
afterwards with the volunteers who were
just hanging around and goofing off
because they wanted a cool picture of
themselves and so it’s really
the struggle that is so important to
connect everyone together right you know
when I when I invite volunteers to come
on my projects and I’m gonna use my
laptop shot as an example which was the
first image I opened the presentation
with you would expect them to be really
excited about being there to see the end
result and they are but that’s not their
favorite part invariably it seems like
the favorite part of the people who come
to my projects is just watching me
suffer watching me struggle watching me
fail and make mistakes and actually just
be an ordinary person so like this this
circle pattern is was created with the
help of a guy I met on a beach a few
years back and I had seen a spiral on
Blade Runner and I thought oh cool I
want to create the same thing this solar
array using laptops so we got there to
the electronic waste recycling facility
laid the whole thing out I had this
vision of what I wanted to create I had
a very detailed pencil sketch it wasn’t
very detailed and and we laid this out
for about four hours and at the end I
looked at the shot and I realized I had
set it all up in the wrong place and so
my girlfriend was pretty upset at me
because she had say setting up and so
with she really wanted me to be sure
that I had set it up in the wrong place
and she said okay are you sure we have
to move it okay we’ll move it so he
moved it and I encountered my next
struggle I had pitched to my sponsor is
this idea of creating projections on the
back of the wall they had sent over four
projectors and we’re gonna create this
these projections that were supposed to
make the whole set look like another
universe but it ended up just looking
like a projector a projection it didn’t
look very good and so I realized then
and there that I was gonna have to
change my entire concept and I didn’t
know what I was gonna do because I
hadn’t thought about it right so we’re
there we have a week to do this whole
thing and Here I am and my carefully
laid out plans had gone completely down
the drain and we had to think about a
new solution so I went home that night I
struggled I stress I couldn’t sleep and
I came up with this other idea I’m like
okay well maybe we can just create our
own wall and and so the next morning we
went out and we bought
12 big pieces of plywood that we we
painted all green and the body painter
who was on the set who had came a few
days earlier to help out ended up
creating this amazing pattern the model
who was there came up with this awesome
idea of putting hinges on the doors so
that we could curve the background
instead of having it flat and at the end
of the day after all these struggles
were worked through we ended up with the
final result and all that was left to do
was line the whole shot up hide a
volunteer behind the model with a leaf
blower
put a flash on a drone fly it all up and
take the pretty picture and so all this
work all this struggle to create a final
product we’re actually the journey the
accessibility and the struggle are
actually far more powerful than the end
result it’s this process of just trying
your best to go from concept execution
the process of gathering volunteers the
process of learning something new
it’s the accessibility so you ignore the
things that people can’t really connect
to too much you don’t talk about the
sponsors you don’t talk about the
facility you don’t talk about the
technical dive issues because that’s
something that’s really complicated to
people and you have to keep the struggle
as much as possible and that’s the
hardest part because no one likes to
share struggle we live in a world which
encourages perfection it shows us every
day on a news feed that never ends the
seemingly extraordinary people doing
extraordinary lives doing extraordinary
things but beneath that fancy veneer of
extraordinary lies a process and a
struggle that is actually very ordinary
so the next time you look up to somebody
and you think to yourself man I wish I
could start my own company or I wish I
could just travel the world or I wish I
could make a difference well guess what
you actually can thank you [Applause]
I do and what sucks about it to give you
a little bit of context this is a kind
of work that I create I do a little bit
of everything from talking to clients
pre-production shoot post-production
editing marketing just about every
single step on the way and it takes me
about six months per project and the
reason I spent so much time to create
these projects is because there are 3.3
million Facebook posts created every 60
seconds there is a lot of content being
created and in order to stand out I have
found that you need to do something
really extraordinary now beyond the
views the real reason why I want to get
these views is because of the reason I
do the work that I do lately I’ve been
focusing on creating work that focuses
on social impact and in this case I’m
trying to highlight electronic waste and
the potential that it has and I’ve found
that it is the best way to educate
through adventure there are tons of
documentaries out there but for someone
to want to look at it is a whole
different question so I trick people by
creating something really flashy so they
look at it and they wonder how it’s done
and along the way then I have the
opportunity to educate them on well did
you know that old electronics could be
recycled to power new devices and that
old circuit boards sometimes have up to
400 times more gold than when it’s found
on the ground right so these little
facts I can sneak in the other reason
that I do what I do is the hope to
inspire others to believe in their
potential to create whatever it is their
heart desires because I’m always
challenging myself to do things I’ve
never done before in this case I’d never
played with electronic waste
I had never created structures and
installations like this before but
through this process of just trying and
problem solving and people coming
together I’m able to create this really
spectacular stuff
but the stuff has a problem right the
problem is that the work that I end up
creating is actually quite unrelatable
and the reason is because when people
look at this they don’t see themselves
in the work that I do after all not
everyone has access to sponsors like
Dell who are gonna provide me with
access to an electronic waste recycling
facility on a Sunday in order to create
something and so what is the solution
well one solution could be to change my
style but I have spent so long trying to
build up this unique style to
communicate important ideas in whatever
way possible and so that’s not really an
option so I have spent a lot of time
trying to figure out how to make my work
more relatable with people and one of
the ways that I do that is by creating
videos like these how do you get people
to talk about something that is ordinary
ugly and boring I wasn’t too sure but
from experience I know that the internet
loves to see things that are extravagant
unique and different so applying that
same concept to plastic bottles having
10,000 of them seemed like a great start
at making something ordinary into
with more plastic than fish in the sea
scheduled for 2015 it made sense to add
an ocean component to the project a sea
of plastic was interesting and sad but
it needed something unique and beautiful
to truly stand out what more unique and
and so with the help of a waste
management center called Tamra and a
local artist in Sofia we ended up with
10,000 plastic bottles that came in a 50
foot truck along with the beautifully
design handmade mermaid tail this
unexpected combination I felt had the
potential to be something truly
different
[Music]
so with all three components to make
things shareable the extravagant the
unique and the different I felt like we
had all of the ingredients necessary to
create something that could potentially
make the boring topic of plastic
pollution more shareable as a shoot
deadlines creep Lord dozens of
volunteers joined us in our quest
contributing whatever they could from
helping us clean and D label thousands
of bottles to ring up my camera to the
ceiling with plywood and pulleys to
borrowing a 52 inch TV from Costco for
the mermaid talented artists came
together to transform our beautiful
model into a believable mermaid and
before I knew it all the pressure was on
me waiting to see if the concerts would
[Music]
as a day flew by volunteers worked
tirelessly pushing bottles around
collecting them organizing them by color
before tossing them right back out onto
the floor to create a new set of
patterns that some crazy photographer
had told them to do
slowly but surely an extravagant unique
and different series appeared just like
Ed hoped but deep in the back of my mind
one nagging thought remained how much
difference could a series like this
possibly make and encouraging people to
stop using plastic bottles honestly I’m
not sure but I guess I’m about to find
out
[Applause]
[Music]
so with the help of a simple video the
same photograph that you just saw two
minutes ago has now become a lot more
relatable and why is that is because we
talked a little bit more about the
process the process of how a bunch of
people just came together in order to
create something that didn’t exist
before a bunch of people came together
to fight for something that they
believed in and these are only the
elements that looked the prettiest I in
the video I didn’t talk about how I
happened to be in Montreal because my
sister was getting married and how my
mom was the one that actually found the
mermaid tail when she was looking for
someone to fix my sister’s wedding dress
or or how the reason we had a warehouse
to play in was because I had shot the
guy’s wedding five years back before he
owned anything right so these that at
the end of the day it’s all these
different story elements that we can
bring together in order to make
something that is seemingly really
complex and unattainable into something
a little bit more accessible but it’s
not just about process process alone
isn’t enough so I want to take this
photograph as an example it’s a type of
work that I used to create before my
social impact days this was a commercial
created for company called Valentine’s
and they wanted me to do the craziest
thing that I had never done before and I
said okay I found this underwater River
online it’s in Mexico it’s 30 meters
underwater there’s a toxic layer of
hydrogen sulfide that squashed between
some fresh water and some saltwater and
it looks like an underwater River and I
thought it would be really cool to put a
boat on an underwater River it’s kind of
funny and so they said okay let’s do it
they custom-made this bird it’s a
taxidermied bird that was flown in from
some country we built a boat a
super-heavy boat that had to be lugged
from through the forest and dropped into
the cenote we gathered all these divers
that flew in hundreds of thousands of
dollars of equipment and dropped it down
30 meters under in order to create this
photograph and so I’ve just shared with
you the process on how this project came
to be but really none of it is relatable
right now let me tell you another story
about a very similar photograph this
photo was taken 30 meters underwater
just like the other one but this time in
a shipwreck in Bali now it happened when
I was supposed to be on vacation
my parents were trying to convince me to
go on a vacation I really didn’t want to
like hate vacations and they said well
you can learn diving and I was like okay
maybe that would work and as I looked
around trying to figure out what to do
once I got my dive certification I saw
shipwreck and I and I was like if
there’s a shipwreck then I need to do a
photo shoot if I need a photo shoot I
need a motto if I need a model I need a
dress and there was no more vacation but
what was really interesting was that I
when I landed there on the Saturday and
I met up with a dive master who was
introduced by a friend that I had met on
Facebook and I told him my wild idea to
do this photo shoot he kind of looked at
me a little crazy because I didn’t have
a dive certification yet but lo and
behold after two days of dive training
and a bunch of e-mails back and forth
with different people on Wednesday I got
my dive certification on Thursday we
went down and did this project and this
was what came out of it now this process
though is a lot more interesting and why
because it’s a lot more accessible it’s
got this situational accessibility this
idea of a vacation gone a little bit
crazy but not too crazy so that it can’t
be that you can’t connect with it and be
on situational access there’s also
emotional accessibility who here is
scared of sharks you know when you’re
scared of sharks like sharks have a
really bad rep we kill like a hundred
million of them every year and I think
they kill maybe three or four people a
year which might sound horrible but more
people die from selfie-stick related
deaths and sharks yet no one’s scared of
them and and so I like to use this
emotional connection that people have to
things whether it’s fear or excitement
depending on which side of the spectrum
you fall and leverage that as a tool to
to connect with people because while you
might not relate to being tied
underwater 12 meters under this idea of
a shark swimming around might terrify
you and then through that once again I
can trick people into explaining the
situation on how we shouldn’t actually
fear sharks and that out of the 300
species of 300 plus species of sharks
that exists out there only a few are
another example of emotional access is
maybe the fear of heights
anyone here scared of heights I
personally love Heights I like if I if I
have the opportunity to I always go to
the highest place I possibly can and
look over but for most others they have
this kind of lurch in this feeling and
this is something that is universal
doesn’t matter what culture you’re from
doesn’t matter from what place you’re
from and so when Nike reached out to me
and said they wanted to promote their
shoes I said oh what if we had people
running off the side of the buildings
they offered me instagramers and I
pushed back I said what about using
social entrepreneurs and so we found
these social entrepreneurs this is Mike
he’s he’s running off the side of the
building which is actually a building a
low-income housing building that he
brought a basketball court to in order
to bring sports to underprivileged
children’s lives and we created this
story as a result and while the whole
setup of this might be a little bit
crazy and unrelatable this fear of
heights this idea of an ordinary person
challenging himself to do something he’s
never done before is something that we
can all relate to I have this series of
photographs that I created for a company
they’re called SmugMug and and they
wanted epic black and white portraits of
their employees showing off their guns
because they had just renovated a new
gym and wanted to print them out to
motivate their employees I thought it
would be really cool to make that as
epic as possible so we created PVC pipes
and garden sprinklers and pass water
through them and created a little rain
machine so for 50 dollars we had this
really cool trick to make everyday
people look really really cool so that’s
actually the CEO that’s his wife in the
middle and there’s a head of marketing
on the other side and so when I launched
this project to a photography audience
we called it the $50 trick to epic
portraiture and it performed pretty well
because photographers were really
excited about this new trick that they
could apply to their everyday workflow
the rest of the world didn’t care
because they’re not gonna do that with
their their cell phones right and so
when I really tried to connect with the
rest of the world because the rest of
the worlds are the people that hire
photographers we decided to relaunch the
entire campaign this time on the 1st of
January
why the 1st of January because that’s
when everyone makes their New Year
resolutions they make their new year’s
resolutions perhaps to go to the gym and
so we relaunch the campaign and focus
not on the end result but rather the
transformation of ordinary people
transformed into extra Nouri
extraordinary athletes and at the end of
the day it created a brand new
connection with people this time around
the idea that you could look
extraordinary if you just hired a great
photographer yeah no need to go to the
gym and so these are just three examples
of how you make things a little bit more
accessible through situations through
emotions and through the different human
characteristics of what makes us who we
are and what we care about now artists
have a really hard time on social media
I think it this this digital age has
really transformed things because
everyone is trying to look as great as
possible everyone wants to be perfect
everyone’s trying to put their best foot
forward and I don’t think it’s maybe
maybe not just artist but just everyday
people anyone who’s on social media
struggles a little bit with this and the
funny thing about it is that although we
try so hard to be perfect what we can
end up doing I feel many of the times
has just hurt our ability to connect
with other is it actually often weakens
it weakens us so this project is another
example that I did a while back and the
idea was to showcase employees their
customer support heroes showing off –
what great heights they would go for
their customers and so we thought it
would be a fun idea to dress them up as
superheroes and put them on the edge of
a 40 storey skyscraper but at the end of
the day after we did the project after I
edited the whole thing trying to make it
look as polished as possible the the
nicest result that I could and I showed
it to people and people were like is it
real until all this effort that went
into creating something and my desire to
make it look as good as possible ended
up making the final result less
relatable then the fun photos we took
afterwards with the volunteers who were
just hanging around and goofing off
because they wanted a cool picture of
themselves and so it’s really
the struggle that is so important to
connect everyone together right you know
when I when I invite volunteers to come
on my projects and I’m gonna use my
laptop shot as an example which was the
first image I opened the presentation
with you would expect them to be really
excited about being there to see the end
result and they are but that’s not their
favorite part invariably it seems like
the favorite part of the people who come
to my projects is just watching me
suffer watching me struggle watching me
fail and make mistakes and actually just
be an ordinary person so like this this
circle pattern is was created with the
help of a guy I met on a beach a few
years back and I had seen a spiral on
Blade Runner and I thought oh cool I
want to create the same thing this solar
array using laptops so we got there to
the electronic waste recycling facility
laid the whole thing out I had this
vision of what I wanted to create I had
a very detailed pencil sketch it wasn’t
very detailed and and we laid this out
for about four hours and at the end I
looked at the shot and I realized I had
set it all up in the wrong place and so
my girlfriend was pretty upset at me
because she had say setting up and so
with she really wanted me to be sure
that I had set it up in the wrong place
and she said okay are you sure we have
to move it okay we’ll move it so he
moved it and I encountered my next
struggle I had pitched to my sponsor is
this idea of creating projections on the
back of the wall they had sent over four
projectors and we’re gonna create this
these projections that were supposed to
make the whole set look like another
universe but it ended up just looking
like a projector a projection it didn’t
look very good and so I realized then
and there that I was gonna have to
change my entire concept and I didn’t
know what I was gonna do because I
hadn’t thought about it right so we’re
there we have a week to do this whole
thing and Here I am and my carefully
laid out plans had gone completely down
the drain and we had to think about a
new solution so I went home that night I
struggled I stress I couldn’t sleep and
I came up with this other idea I’m like
okay well maybe we can just create our
own wall and and so the next morning we
went out and we bought
12 big pieces of plywood that we we
painted all green and the body painter
who was on the set who had came a few
days earlier to help out ended up
creating this amazing pattern the model
who was there came up with this awesome
idea of putting hinges on the doors so
that we could curve the background
instead of having it flat and at the end
of the day after all these struggles
were worked through we ended up with the
final result and all that was left to do
was line the whole shot up hide a
volunteer behind the model with a leaf
blower
put a flash on a drone fly it all up and
take the pretty picture and so all this
work all this struggle to create a final
product we’re actually the journey the
accessibility and the struggle are
actually far more powerful than the end
result it’s this process of just trying
your best to go from concept execution
the process of gathering volunteers the
process of learning something new
it’s the accessibility so you ignore the
things that people can’t really connect
to too much you don’t talk about the
sponsors you don’t talk about the
facility you don’t talk about the
technical dive issues because that’s
something that’s really complicated to
people and you have to keep the struggle
as much as possible and that’s the
hardest part because no one likes to
share struggle we live in a world which
encourages perfection it shows us every
day on a news feed that never ends the
seemingly extraordinary people doing
extraordinary lives doing extraordinary
things but beneath that fancy veneer of
extraordinary lies a process and a
struggle that is actually very ordinary
so the next time you look up to somebody
and you think to yourself man I wish I
could start my own company or I wish I
could just travel the world or I wish I
could make a difference well guess what
you actually can thank you [Applause]
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